Shintarō Ashizuka is directing the film, and also co-writes the script alongside Deko Akao. The group “a crowd of rebellion” performs the films’ theme song “Calling,” and the band’s guitarist Baku Maruyama is also composing the film’s music.

The first part of the Chō Shōnen Tantei-dan NEO Project is DLE‘s television anime, which premiered in January 2017. The anime is set a century in the future in 2117 in Tokyo. The battles between the detective Kogorō Akechi and The Fiend With Twenty Faces from the original novels have now lasted through seven generations.

Shōnen Tantei-dan (The Boy Detectives Club) is the title of both the 1937 novel by renowned Japanese mystery novelist Edogawa Rampo (Rampo Edogawa), and the title of a series of Edogawa novels. (The aforementioned titular novel is actually the second in the series; the first was 1936’s The Fiend With Twenty Faces.) The character of Yoshio Kobayashi appears in many of the novels as the young leader of the club. Kobayashi is the top apprentice of Kogorō Akechi — Japan’s greatest detective and another character created by Edogawa.

Poplar began republishing the novel volumes in 1964, and the series has sold 16.6 million copies. Poplar and DLE announced the Chō Shōnen Tantei-dan NEO Project in February 2016. The project’s main story moves the setting to the present day with plans for a live-action series, events, books, and more.